Food stamp rage bait

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Today, Explained – "Food Stamp Rage Bait"

Date: October 30, 2025
Hosts: Noel King, Sean Rameswaram
Guests: Chrissy Clark (journalist, social safety net expert), Kiki Ruff (budget cooking content creator)

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Overview

This episode of Today, Explained explores the looming crisis of SNAP (food stamps) running out amid a government shutdown, and how social media rage-bait—viral videos mocking welfare recipients—is fueling toxic narratives around food assistance in America. Hosts Noel King and Chrissy Clark investigate both the deep-rooted stereotypes and current misinformation, while Kiki Ruff discusses practical realities and the emotional toll for Americans relying on SNAP.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Looming SNAP Crisis in the Shutdown

• Over 40 million Americans rely on SNAP, and a government shutdown means those benefits will soon run out.
• Widespread impact expected imminently, discrediting the claim that the shutdown "isn't affecting that many people."

  "More than 40 million Americans rely on SNAP or food stamps to eat. And on Saturday, due to the shutdown, those benefits are gonna run out.”
  — Noel King (00:03)

2. The Food Stamp Narrative Gets Supercharged Online

• Viral social media videos—often parodies or skits—show people boasting about living on government aid, not working, having many children, or feeling entitled.
• Many such videos are staged or satirical, but the comments section reveals real vitriol: recipients are called "parasites," "looters," and accused of generational dependence.
• These images and messages, though not representative, escalate outrage, exploiting and reinforcing old stereotypes.

  “We have no idea who these people are or if they actually do receive food stamps or not.... It's specifically a parody account that says that it's somebody who likes to do satire and skits.”
  — Chrissy Clark (03:35)
  "People calling these people entitled parasites, looters, people living off food stamps, intergenerational dependency.”
  — Chrissy Clark (04:05)

Toxic Tropes Persist

• Stereotypes about SNAP recipients as lazy or cheating are deeply embedded in American culture and politics; anti-welfare sentiment recycles old anxieties.
• Actual data counters these images:
  • About two-thirds on SNAP are children, the elderly, or people with disabilities.
  • Of those “able” to work, most do work (or recently have).
  • Average benefit is about $6 per person, per day.

  “This whole idea that the typical SNAP recipient is just sucking off the government teat and doesn't want to work... is not reflected in the data.”
  — Chrissy Clark (05:25)

3. Historical Roots of Welfare Rage (07:02–08:54)

• Reagan’s “welfare queen” narrative set a foundation for demonizing recipients and justifying benefit cuts in the 1980s.
• Welfare reform in 1996, prompted by similar tropes, imposed work requirements and drastically reduced aid.
• Visual media and news headlines have long reinforced the image of the "undeserving poor," often with racist undertones.

4. Social Media Amplification in 2025

• While social media spreads rage-bait faster and further, the underlying story is not new.

  “Maybe they're amplified, they get to people faster... but... there were these certain stereotypes and suspicions that we didn't need social media for.”
  — Chrissy Clark (09:29)

5. Political Shifts and SNAP’s Future (10:12–12:00)

• After the 2024 election, many poor and working-class voters who use SNAP shifted toward supporting Republicans, raising questions about policy shifts.
• Some GOP figures (e.g., Senator Josh Hawley) now publicly support SNAP, but careful scrutiny shows underlying efforts to restrict eligibility continue.

  “If you actually look at his voting record... those in some ways are going to have much more long term and far reaching effects in terms of limiting who has access to food stamps.”
  — Chrissy Clark (11:28)

6. On-the-Ground Realities: Where Do People Turn? (12:00–14:00)

• Nonprofits and food banks cannot fill the gap left by SNAP withdrawal.
• First-hand reporting shows acute immediacy—people lining up at Walmart at midnight for their SNAP to refresh, often budgeting to the last dollar.

  “There is no way that we could replace the kind of support that food stamps offers.”
  — Chrissy Clark (12:14)

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In Conversation: Kiki Ruff on Living with Less

(18:02–27:17)

7. BudgetCooking as a Lifeline and Community

• Kiki Ruff creates content teaching “recession meals” that leverage food bank staples and dollar store ingredients.
• Her channel exploded in popularity due to increased food insecurity and demand for low-cost recipes.

  "I woke up and I had 150,000 followers. And I was like, whoa, where'd you guys come from? But to me, that just meant that since there was such a demand that this became my responsibility."
  — Kiki Ruff (19:44)

8. Personal Experience of the Safety Net & SNAP Gaps

• Kiki's lived experience: working multiple jobs, still unable to afford food, getting minimal SNAP assistance, losing it after a small wage increase (a classic "benefits cliff").
• Cooking skills honed under pressure—sometimes subsisting on home-baked bread when that’s all she could manage.

  "With that, I realized that, hey, even though I'm doing like 12–16 hour days, I still can't afford to eat."
  — Kiki Ruff (19:54)

9. Dignity and Autonomy in Eating

• Her content emphasizes giving people choices with the little they have: turning basic staples into multiple meal options.
• Choice (even in small things, like what to eat) restores dignity for those on food assistance.

  “It gives them that element of choice and dignity when it comes to eating.”
  — Kiki Ruff (22:20)

10. Emotional Toll of SNAP Loss

• The impending loss of benefits creates “raw, pure, primal fear.”
• Shame and reluctance to seek community aid compound psychological hardship.

  “When you don't know where your food is going to come from... it's scary and it is again, like, shameful.…who can actually, actually help me. Am I too embarrassed to ask...?”
  — Kiki Ruff (24:06)

11. Structural Issues: What’s Gone Wrong?

• Wealth inequality and “wealth hoarding” are blamed for the persistence (and worsening) of hunger in America.
• The failure of “trickle down” economics is cited as a cause for underfunded safety nets.

  "Since there's been so much wealth hoarding, there's no trickling down.... it's going to continue to affect the bottom, whose work is being profited off of."
  — Kiki Ruff (25:16)

12. A Message to Policymakers

• Lawmakers need to truly understand SNAP recipients' realities and stop seeing them as mere statistics; empathy and presence in local communities are essential.

  “If you are not actually out actively in your community looking at how this is affecting the average American, then what are you doing?”
  — Kiki Ruff (26:14)

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Memorable Quotes & Notable Moments

• Chrissy Clark on SNAP Recipients:

  “The average benefit for the average food stamp recipient is about $6 a day.” (05:41)

• On Political Cynicism:

  “My biggest message…especially for anyone who has profited off of someone else's time and work, is to make sure that you are leaning into the bottom as much as you are the top.”
  — Kiki Ruff (26:44)

• Dignity and Food Choice:

  “That's not only dignity, but it's also autonomy that a lot of people who are facing food insecurity just don't have at this time.”
  — Kiki Ruff (22:49)

• On the Viral Rage-Bait Economy:

  “Here we go again. This is the same playbook, the same fears. Maybe they're amplified, they get to people faster.”
  — Chrissy Clark (09:33)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:03–02:00 — SNAP benefits set to run out; government and political soundbites
• 03:11–05:59 — Social media rage-bait, stereotypes, and the reality of food stamp data
• 07:02–08:54 — History of welfare stereotypes; impact on policy
• 09:29–10:12 — Is social media changing the narrative or just amplifying old tropes?
• 10:12–12:00 — Political shifts post-2024; scrutiny of Republican rhetoric on SNAP
• 12:00–14:02 — First-hand accounts: food banks, midnight grocery runs, acute impact of benefits loss
• 18:02–19:49 — Kiki Ruff, her background, and rise as a budget cooking creator
• 19:52–22:31 — Life on SNAP, learning to stretch meals, restoring choice
• 23:08–24:56 — The emotional impact: hunger, shame, and fear in losing benefits
• 25:16–26:14 — Structural causes: Wealth hoarding and systemic inequality
• 26:14–27:17 — Message to lawmakers: See constituents as people, not just data

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Tone & Style

Faithful to the original interviews—frank, empathetic, and sometimes irreverent—this episode blends policy analysis with lived experience, aiming to debunk myths and put faces on the numbers.

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For listeners: This conversation offers essential context on the SNAP crisis, the dangers of viral misinformation, and the lived realities of hunger in America. It is both a critique of the system and a call for empathy and informed reform.

Transcript

[Noel King]

There's been this argument that the government shutdown isn't getting as much attention as everyone thought it would because it's not affecting that many people. That's about to change. More than 40 million Americans rely on SNAP or food stamps to eat. And on Saturday, due to the shutdown, those benefits are gonna run out. Last night on Air Force One, President Trump was asked what's going to happen? And he said, we're gonna get it done.

[Chrissy Clark]

We're gonna get it done.

[Noel King]

Coming up on Today explains the conversation around food stamps deserves them. Has always been toxic in the U.S. but this new kind of viral rage bait social media video is juicing it this time around. Get up off your behind and do what they asking you to do. Stop waiting for a handout. Stop moving your mouth. Start moving them hands.

[Kiki Ruff]

No more handing you a debit card filled with other people's cash for you.

[Noel King]

To go load up on Oreos. Because guess what? If you don't work, you not going to eat. Support for today's show comes from AT&T, the network that helps Americans make connections. According to AT&T, when you compare, there's no comparison. AT&T support for TODAY Explained comes from Nuremberg, a film from Sony Pictures Classics. It's the aftermath of World War II. The world is confronting the horrors of the holocaust, and U. S. Army psychiatrist lieutenant colonel Douglas Kelly is evaluating Herman Guring, oh, Hitler's second in command. Meanwhile, chief prosecutor Robert Jackson leads the allies in forming an unprecedented international tribunal for the trial of the century. As Dr. Kelly delves deeper into Guring's psyche, a tense psychological duel unfolds. Starring who? Starring Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Leo Woodall and Michael Shannon. Only in theaters November 7th.

[Kiki Ruff]

This is Today Explained.

[Chrissy Clark]

My name is Chrissy Clark and I am a journalist. I have covered the social safety net and the policies and the history that have led us to the kind of social safety net that we have for many, many years.

[Noel King]

A couple months ago, I noticed on Twitter that these videos Chrissy kept showing up on my algorithm.

[Kiki Ruff]

I refuse to work.

[Noel King]

The whole reason I had kids was.

[Kiki Ruff]

The amount of government benefits that you get for one child.

[Ad/Announcer]

Now they're telling me I have to go work now I have to go do all this. Well, I. I literally got five kids.

[Noel King]

Y' all take my food stamps. I'm gonna take more than some than a little bit. So I'm at risk of losing my food stamp benefits because I'm not putting in effort.

[Kiki Ruff]

Are you serious?

[Noel King]

It would be usually a woman and she would be Saying something very proudly.

[Kiki Ruff]

Like, so my sister made a video about how my whole entire family gets EBT and everyone is calling us bums because we don't work and we live off the government. And we are proud of that.

[Noel King]

Have you seen these videos in your algorithm?

[Chrissy Clark]

It's funny, we must have different algorithms because I haven't seen, I haven't seen them personally as much, but I certainly have. I've looked at them as sort of as a phenomenon of like, what is going on with these? And I've had a lot of, a lot of questions and a lot of thoughts.

[Noel King]

Tell me where your thoughts go when you see videos like this.

[Chrissy Clark]

Yeah, so I mean, the first thing is of course, just, you know, like, we have no idea who these people are or if they actually do receive food stamps or not. I, I was looking at one of these videos and it's specifically a, a parody account that says that it's somebody who likes to do satire and skits.

[Kiki Ruff]

So my almost 18 year old has been saving for a car and he has a lot of money saved. But then I realized that I needed my nails done and I needed to go clothes and I needed gas, so I took half of his money.

[Chrissy Clark]

So I think one thing is like, do these people, are they actually authentically food stamp recipients themselves, SNAP recipients themselves? And then the reactions that you see in the comments, people calling these people entitled parasites, looters, people living off food stamps, intergenerational dependency.

[Kiki Ruff]

This message is for all the people.

[Chrissy Clark]

That are complaining that they're not getting their food stamps for November.

[Kiki Ruff]

What did you do with October's food stamp money?

[Noel King]

But I got a question. What makes you think that you entitled to take anything that you ain't work for? When y' all were receiving food stamps.

[Chrissy Clark]

You were selling the food stamps, so you weren't worried about feeding your children.

[Noel King]

Men.

[Chrissy Clark]

The first thing that comes to mind is like, this is just not an accurate representation of most people who are receiving food assistance. Like, it is playing in a tried and true and very old set of tropes and stereotypes that we have. But if you actually look at the numbers, that is not an accurate depiction of most food stamp recipients. For one thing, the vast majority of people who receive food stamps, I don't think anybody would expect them to work. Two thirds of participants are children or adults over age 60 or people with disabilities. Then when you sort of take those folks out and you look at most SNAP participants who theoretically can work, a majority of those people are working in any given month. And a vast majority of them have worked either in the last 12 months or will be working in the next 12 months. The average benefit for the average food stamp recipient is about $6 a day. So this whole idea that the typical SNAP recipient is just sucking off the government teat and doesn't want to work and just is lazy, that is not reflected in the data.

[Noel King]

What about the response entitled parasites, looters, intergenerational dependency? Does that surprise you?

[Chrissy Clark]

Sadly, it does not. Because it is a story as old as our country and even older, that there is this deep anxiety that folks in the US have kind of collectively and that has been kind of amplified in many ways by politicians.

[Kiki Ruff]

Everybody got on the wagon, all these.

[Chrissy Clark]

Young, able bodied young men who don't have dependents riding the wagon.

[Noel King]

So you know what?

[Chrissy Clark]

We put work requirements in sort of this deep anxiety about when we help people collectively, are we helping the right people? There's this fundamental divide I think a lot of Americans have and that runs through American history of who are the deserving poor, the people that deserve our help, and who are the not deserving poor.

[Noel King]

How do our assumptions and even our suspicions get turned into policy?

[Chrissy Clark]

Well, I mean, we all have probably heard of Reagan's tropes around, quote unquote, welfare queens.

[Ad/Announcer]

In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record. She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, Veterans benefits for 4 non existent.

[Chrissy Clark]

Deceased veterans husbands, as well as welfare.

[Ad/Announcer]

Her tax free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.

[Chrissy Clark]

And that was also tied into efforts that he made to put deep cuts into food stamp eligibility and food stamp payments in the 1980s. And then you jumped to 1996 when Congress passed sort of the most sweeping welfare reforms in history and was very much tied to work requirements. From now on, our nation's answer to this great social challenge will no longer be a never ending cycle of welfare. It will be the dignity, the power and the ethic of work. Today we are taking an historic chance to make welfare what it was meant to be. A second chance, not a way of life. You know, there's this one sort of telling moment right before then there were the New Republic. The magazine had a cover photo in August of 1996 with the big splashy headline Day of Reckoning. Sign the bill. Now this is encouraging Clinton to sign the welfare reform acts that were going to really gut welfare as we knew it. And on the COVID of the magazine is a picture of a black woman with a cigarette in her hand, holding a little Baby who's drinking from a bottle and then below it sign the welfare bill.

[Noel King]

Now, I remember the 1990s. I was a kid, but I know that the welfare queen trope was kind of in the water. It does make me think about what's going on in the present day, where a single tweet that claims to be a video of a woman saying, I have nine kids and I'm never going to get a job because I get food stamps can suddenly reach millions of people. When you see these videos on social media, is there something different now because of just how viral they can go?

[Chrissy Clark]

It's interesting. I mean, I'm sure there is, but the feeling that I get is not, oh, we're in this new world. It is, here we go again. This is the same playbook, the same fears. Maybe they're amplified, they get to people faster. But yeah, I was a kid in the 90s also, and it was in the water. It was just kind of what? There were these certain stereotypes and certain suspicions that we didn't need social media for. They were already there. And I think that that mess and those suspicions are going to travel one way or another.

[Noel King]

There is one big difference in 2025 from the past, and we've talked about it on the show. Safety net programs are typically seen as Democratic terrain. Democrats vote for them, Democrats need them. But then this situation changed after the 2024 election because a lot of poor and working class people voted for Donald Trump. So recently you saw Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri, wrote an op ed in the Times saying we need to fund snap.

[Chrissy Clark]

Well, yeah, and listen, I don't care who they voted for. I mean, my view is, is that.

[Kiki Ruff]

No child in this country ought to.

[Chrissy Clark]

Go to bed hungry because of a bunch of politicians in Washington can't decide what they want to do. And they're, they're, they're intent on blaming each other.

[Noel King]

Do you see Republicans changing their tune on welfare because increasingly the people who need benefits are voting Republican?

[Chrissy Clark]

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I mean, I guess I would push back a little bit on it because, for example, like, if you look at Josh Hawley, he has come out with this bill and he has spoken about, you know, reading his op ed in the New York Times. I very much was sort of reading it through the lens of like, he's trying to focus on the quote unquote, deserving poor here. I also think that if you actually look at his voting record this summer, he voted for the sweeping changes to food stamp eligibility and other sorts of public assistance eligibility that were in the so called one big beautiful bill. And those in some ways are going to have much more long term and far reaching effects in terms of limiting who has access to food stamps and to other kinds of government assistance.

[Noel King]

Saturday is when the benefits run out. You've been reporting on this, Chrissy, for a very long time. When people lose their benefits and when they lose them in such great numbers, where do they turn for help? Where do they go to find food?

[Chrissy Clark]

Yeah, I mean there is a network of food banks and food pantries. You know, sort of the nonprofit sector is obviously trying to fill in the breach. But I think anybody you talk to in that world says there is no way that we could replace the kind of support that food stamps offers and that we collectively as a nation through our government offer. A few years ago I was in Dayton, Ohio and I was at a Walmart right at midnight because I knew that was when the clock strikes 12:01 you have your monthly benefits. And the number of people who right when the clock struck 12:01 were going into Walmart late at night to start buying food showed you like the immediate need. This isn't something you can wait until the next day even. I ran into this woman who was with her 8 year old son at like midnight 12:30am and her food stamps had already run out from the last month. As much as she tried to budget things, she also had a job she worked for I think a Dollar General. She just couldn't make ends meet without this help. So you think about that come November 1st what that's gonna mean to not get that when you are planning you need to go to the grocery stor like stat to get your food and then you don't have the money to buy it.

[Noel King]

Chrissy Clark is a journalist who covers the social safety net. Coming up, how to eat when you're really broke. Support for Today explained comes from AT&T. There's nothing worse than needing to make a call and realizing you can't connect, says AT&T. And of course every wireless provider will claim that they're the best. But AT and T says AT and T has the goods to back it up. According to root metrics, AT&T earned the best overall network performance. While the other guys are busy making claims they can't keep, AT&T says they're making connections on America's fastest and most reliable wireless network. No matter if you're at a concert, a huge sporting event or just out enjoying nature, you can post when you want to post. Don't post when you're enjoying nature, guys. Keep it in control. Call when you want to call. And rest easy knowing that no matter where you go, AT and T has got you covered. When you compare, there's no comparison AT and T based on Root metrics United States root score report 1H2025 tested with best commercially available smartphones Smartphones on three national mobile networks across all available network types. Your experiences may vary. Root metrics rankings are not an endorsement of AT and T.

[Chrissy Clark]

Support for Today.

[Noel King]

Explained comes from Crucible Moments, a podcast from Sequoia Capital. Perhaps you've had a pivotal decision point in your life, whether you knew it or not at the time, and then everything changed. Apparently, according to Sequoia, this is especially true in business. Like for example, did you know that autonomous drone delivery company Zipline originally produced a robotic toy? Or that Bolt, for example, went from an Estonian transportation company? I actually did know this. An Estonian transportation company to one of the largest rideshare and food delivery platforms in this world. That's what Crucible Moments is all about. Deep diving into the make or break moments that set the course for these important tech companies, with interviews from some of the key players that made these companies such a success. Hosted by Sequoia Capital's managing partner Roelof Botha, Crucible Moments is back with a new season. You'll hear from company leaders at Zipline, Stripe, Palo Alto Networks, Klarna Supercell. So much more how they made their most consequential decisions. You can subscribe to Season 3 of Crucible Moments and also guys, catch up on seasons one and two at cruciblemoments.com on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Crucible Moments today.

[Ad/Announcer]

Support for the show comes from Crucible Moments, a podcast from Sequoia Capital. We've all had pivotal decision points in our lives that, whether we know it or not at the time, changed everything. This is especially true in business. Like did you know that autonomous drone delivery company Zipline originally produced a robotic toy? Or that Bolt went from an Estonian transportation company to one of the largest rideshare and food delivery platforms in the world? That's what Crucible Moments is all about. Hosted by Sequoia Capital's managing partner, Roloff Botha, Crucible Moments is back for a new season with stories of companies as they navigated the most consequential crossroads in their journeys. Hear conversations with leaders at Zipline, Stripe, Palo Alto Networks, Klarna Supercell and more. Subscribe to Season 3 of Crucible Moments and catch up on Seasons 1 and [e-mail] on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Crucible Moments today.

[Noel King]

Okay, let's see here.

[Chrissy Clark]

Today, Today.

[Noel King]

Explained, Explained. I'm Noel King with Kiki Ruff. Keke's a content creator who fits into this category of influencers who teach people to eat on the cheap. Kiki makes recession meals using things that can be found at dollar stores and food banks. Kiki, why did you start this channel?

[Kiki Ruff]

It's a funny story. So I was let go from my job at the beginning of the year and I remember being great at software demonstrations. So I said, hey, you know what? I will just buy a camera, go freelance and make software demonstrations for different companies within the product ecosystem I'm in and posted one cooking video for fun.

[Chrissy Clark]

You couldn't get eggs.

[Kiki Ruff]

Is this your first time being poor? We're still gonna have breakfast. And it was a common latchkey meal for kids who had access to bread, butter, and cinnamon sugar. I don't wanna see the butter, I don't wanna see the toast. I want this completely covered in cinnamon sugar.

[Chrissy Clark]

Right?

[Kiki Ruff]

And people loved it. And I started realizing that as food access was slimming, the need for these recipes just got so much greater. So I figured, you know what? I'll do a couple more, see what happens. This dinner with hot dog, sausage or bratwurst. I'm going with bratwurst because I got them for $2. After the 4th of July, it's come to my attention that not everyone's mom taught them how to throw together a chili. What am I supposed to do with more canned potatoes? I am so glad you asked. No rules for this dish, no shame in my kitchen. I woke up and I had 150,000 followers. And I was like, whoa, where'd you guys come from? But to me, that just meant that since there was such a demand that this became my responsibility.

[Noel King]

Where did you learn to cook on the cheap?

[Kiki Ruff]

So I faced a period of hardship my second year of college and it got to the point where I needed to drop out just for my own sake. And I was immediately shot into the reality of working multiple 8, 25 jobs. And with that, I realized that, hey, even though I'm doing like 1216 hour days, I still can't afford to eat. I all of a sudden didn't have insurance through the school and I had no housing assistance. So I went and I applied for SNAP. I applied for EBT. And they had said, hey, since you have two jobs, we're going to give you 40 bucks a month. I was like, oh, great. So I went on to losing that SNAP assistance when I got a 10 cents an hour raise at one of my jobs. And I'm self taught, I would say. I used to experiment in the kitchen when I was a kid and I really stepped back from that during the 2008 recession because my parents, it was hard for them if I mess something up, you know, because all of a sudden I'm wasting ingredients. So during that period of hardship in college is when I really honed in these skills and I said, you know what? I'll bake a loaf of bread today. I'll bake cinnamon rolls today. And maybe all I ate that day was cinnamon rolls, but at least I was fed.

[Noel King]

Hmm. Tell us about the kind of thing that you cook for your audience.

[Kiki Ruff]

So I try to listen to my community people in my comments asking, what do you have access to this week or what do you need to learn? And a comment that I've been seeing really frequently is protein and what do I do with my black beans? And I don't know when it became a luxury to have protein, but we're gonna work on that today because we don't have any other choices now, do we? The most requested meals I have seen come in this last week use beans, rice or pasta. So I've done a couple different variations of black beans. I started with a World War II bean loaf, which is like a meatloaf replacement. It comes out looking like a piece of meatloaf or a piece of bread. But just remember, treat it like meat. So if you're going to do steak sauce or barbecue sauce or ketchup, whatever you would put on your meatloaf, you're going to put on this bean loaf. I've also done black bean burgers and now I've done meatballs and they are cooked differently. But now someone who only has access to black beans has the ability to choose what they actually want to put on their plate rather than just heating up the can of beans and having the same thing over and over again. It gives them that element of choice and dignity when it comes to eating.

[Noel King]

Tell me about dignity.

[Kiki Ruff]

When I, When I talk about the element of choice and having dignity, it's. I could boil it down to, let's say someone is going to a soup kitchen and they don't have a choice as to what they're eating. They're eating potato soup every day at the same soup kitchen. Now, all of a Sudden they introduced minestrone or three bean soup. And they have the ability to choose what is going into their body. And that is not only dignity, but it's also autonomy that a lot of people who are facing in food insecurity just don't have at this time.

[Noel King]

What was the hardest part for you about being on snap?

[Kiki Ruff]

The hardest part was making that budget work and deciding, like, what was worth it. Stepping away from things like, I maybe wanted to eat because they were more nutritious, or I knew they'd be more filling, but having the reality of like, okay, well, that's out of my dollar and a quarter budget for the day. Where can I make that up? So it's like balancing money with hunger, I would say, because there were still nights where I just didn't have dinner. Cause I couldn't afford it and I could just sleep it off. And that is a lot of people's reality right now. So managing the budget and the hunger was just really difficult.

[Noel King]

I wonder, as you've been talking to people who are on the precipice of losing SNAP benefits, of losing the safety net, what are they telling you about how they feel?

[Kiki Ruff]

Raw, pure, primal fear. I mean, like, that is a basic need. And when you don't know where your food is going to come from, or even, like, let's add a layer of complexity to it, where your children's food is going to come from, it's scary and it is again, like, shameful. And you feel afraid to reach out for help because it's like everybody is sitting in this position who can actually, actually help me. Am I too embarrassed to ask my, you know, community center or my church for aid? Because then all of a sudden it looks like I am financially unstable. And I wish that there was more that I could do to quell those fears. But really all I can do right now is be present and give what I have.

[Noel King]

We talked in the first half of our show about why the US Is so bad at taking care of people on basic stuff like food. I mean, this is a rich country. And even researching, I've been shocked how many Americans are going hungry. What is the diagnosis? What do you think has gone wrong here?

[Kiki Ruff]

Wealth inequality, definitely. I think when I was younger, when I was first forming my own political socioeconomic opinions, I remember thinking, huh, I bet you trickle down economics really does work. And since there's been so much wealth hoarding, there's no trickling down these huge extravagant expenses that could be like, donate one of your yachts, you know, and feed America. I just think that since there is so much sitting at the top and we aren't reinvesting into our society and we're looking more at luxury and wealth hoarding, that it's going to continue to affect the bottom, whose work is being profited off of.

[Noel King]

If you could use your influence to send a message to our government about what you see every day, these interactions that you have, and what you're worried about, what would the message be?

[Kiki Ruff]

I think that the message would be that if you are going to represent your constituents on basic needs, you need to go meet your constituents where they're at. You need to actually be present so you can visualize the struggles that people are having. Because right now I feel like our population is looked at in terms of just numbers and stats and demographics. And it's like if you are not actually out actively in your community looking at how this is affecting the average American, then what are you doing? I think that my biggest message and my biggest takeaway, especially, especially for anyone who has profited off of someone else's time and work, is to make sure that you you are leaning into the bottom as much as you are the top.

[Noel King]

Kiki Ruff. You can find her on social media. Ikiruff Danielle Hewitt produced today's show. Amina El Saadi edited, Adrian Lilly and Patrick Boyd are our engineers and Laura Bullard checks the facts. Vox memberships are still on sale. Get them while they're hot. Hot perks like newsletters, unlimited reading. No ads on this podcast. I saw the new ad copy you guys is Vox.com members to sign up and get that discount now. I'm Noel King. It's Today Explained Foreign.

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[Noel King]

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